Wednesday, October 31, 2012

UN urges foreign fishing fleets to halt ‘ocean grabbing’

By: Alister Doyle

GRAB
... A UN report says emerging nations should tighten rules for access
to their waters by an industrial fleet that is rapidly growing and
includes vessels from China, Russia, the European Union, the United
States and Japan.

OSLO – ‘Ocean grabbing’ or aggressive industrial fishing by foreign
fleets is a threat to food security in developing nations where
governments should do more to promote local, small-scale fisheries, a
study by a UN expert said on Tuesday.

The report said
emerging nations should tighten rules for access to their waters by an
industrial fleet that is rapidly growing and includes vessels from
China, Russia, the European Union, the United States and Japan.‘Ocean-grabbing
is taking place,’ Olivier de Schutter, the UN special rapporteur on the
right to food and the report’s author, told Reuters. ‘It’s like
land-grabbing, just less discussed and less visible.’

The 47-page
report on ‘Fisheries and the Right to Food’, which said 15 per cent of
all animal protein consumed worldwide is from fish, will be presented
to the UN General Assembly.

De Schutter said ocean grabbing involved
‘shady access agreements that harm small-scale fishers, unreported
catch, incursions into protected waters, and the diversion of resources
away from local populations.’

The report cited the example of
islands in the western and central Pacific that get only about six per
cent of the value of a US$3 billion tuna fishery off their coasts.
Foreign fishing fleets get the rest.

Equally, Guinea-Bissau nets
less than two per cent of the value of the fish caught off its coast
under a deal with the EU. De Schutter said some countries where
industrial fleets were based were already taking steps to tighten laws.

“What’s
getting worse is that the capacity of industrial fishing fleets is
increasing,” he said. Governments give an estimated US$30-34 billion in
subsidies to fishing each year.

That money is often spent on boat-building or fuel that skews competition.

“We
need to do more to reduce the capacity of the industrial fishing fleets
and to manage the fish stocks in a much more sustainable way,” said de
Schutter. Food security is also at risk from threats such as climate
change and pollution, he said.

WASTEFUL

De Schutter said
aquaculture was disproportionately concentrated in Asia which is
responsible for 88 per cent of all production. “Extremely little has
been done in Africa and Latin America in particular. There is a huge
potential there,” he said.

Fisheries received less attention than
farming, he suggested, partly because the sector employed only about
200 million people globally. By contrast, the world has 1,5 billion
small-scale farmers, he said.

The report said that local fishing was
more efficient and less wasteful than industrial fishing, urging
measures to promote small-scale fishing such as the creation of
“artisanal fishing zones”.

“Small-scale fishers actually catch more
fish per gallon of fuel than industrial fleets, and discard fewer
fish,’ it said. It praised some measures which have already been taken
to promote local fishing - such as in Cambodia’s biggest lake or off
the Maldives.

Estimates of the scale of illegal catches range from
10 to 28 million tonnes, while some 7,3 million tonnes, or almost 10
per cent of global wild fish catches were discarded as unwanted
by-catches every year, the report said.

It said industrial fishing was by far the most wasteful.

Total
global fish production was about 143 million tonnes - 90 million from
wild fish catches and 53 million from fish farming, the report said.

De
Schutter said fish farming would have to expand to feed a rising world
population, now just above seven billion. Population growth would raise
demand by a forecast 27 million tonnes over the next two decades, he
said.

“Yet again we have an authoritative report which shows us that
overfishing and the damaging effects of poorly managed fisheries is
seriously impacting vulnerable communities’ food security and
livelihoods” said John Tanzer, Marine Director, WWF International.

“The
fact that the number of boats and fishermen has increased eight fold
between 1970 and 1990 yet they are not seeing anything like the
equivalent increase in catch numbers speaks volumes about the
consequences of overfishing and the effects this will have on food
security in the near future.”

“Yet we are still seeing relatively
wealthy governments putting public funds into subsidising boat building
and industrial fishing activities. It makes no sense because we are
essentially mining the oceans instead of nurturing their capacity to
support people’s ongoing needs.” he said.

Increased globalisation of
the fishing industry has meant in 2010 the value of traded fish
products was estimated at US$102 billion, up from US$8 billion in 1976.
Many developing countries have benefited from this increase in the form
of export revenue and state revenue from selling access to their
fishing ground to distant water fleets.

“Without any safeguards
and in the absence of effective fisheries management, these access
agreements could prove harmful to local communities in the form of loss
of fish for people, especially in places where food shortages occur”
said Alfred Schumm, Leader of WWF’s global Smart Fishing Initiative. –
Nampa-Reuters